Hello Dear Readers, a big, deep "WHEW" with thankfulness, as the title of this post says, as there is NONE other, only my Father God Jehovah.
We continue to settle in, in much prayer for each trip to and fro, we begin to see a light at the end of our travels to be completed sometime next year.
Our lives are very different, very, and for dear husband, he is filled with overwhelming peace and joy, there are days as I observe him from a distance, I am in much awe at the change in him, yet, very happy for this. I do not share his deep rooted love for this town, yet, I am challenged daily, to trust God, commit my all to him, and my contentment is, "to bring to the point where one is not disquieted or disturbed by desire, even though not every wish of the desire is gratified." This is where I am, have been for a year and forsee I shall be in this place a bit longer, as I am tested and tried.
When we moved here last year, I believed that we would pick up where we left off on our farm in TN, only at a much more smaller scale. That is not how it has turned out. As I shared in my last post, I believed God made the way for my Elsie, my jersey cow, to come here. I was so thankful and excited, to make butter and cheese again, milking time, which was always a therapy for me, and just have my special time with her, talking and her licking me. We fenced, prepared the barn and was ready for her. She came in March of this year. She calved in May, a nice bull calf. All went well, though she was a bit weak after calving, but got up, licked off her calf, drank her molasses water. That evening we put them in the stall, the next morning she was down and unable to get up. After hours of trying to get her up by several different means, praying and waiting, the next morning she was no better, so we had her put down. How I do miss her. She was a blessing to me for 10 yrs. A wonderful family milk cow, excellent mama and much more. But I did have her calf and enjoyed him each day. I named him 'Rodeo' as he gave a show each time I went out to feed and water him. Alas, only a few months of age, he died of acorn poisoning. I have heard of this though did not consider it when we moved here. In TN we have no oak trees, only poplar mainly. Here, there are oaks every where. I was so upset, sad and in much honesty, angry at God. Although I did not ask verbal in prayer, why?, I did not understand, I wanted answers and got none. Oh the tears for weeks.
You know, God will allow us our time, to rant, cry, separate ourselves from him, etc. and all the while, he is longsuffering to us, waiting on us to complete our cycle. He knows he can not reach us when we are into ourselves and not in tuned to him. So he waites. One day he brought to my mind the song 'I Surrender All'. "All to Jesus I surrender, all to him I freely give." I stopped right there, all to him I FREELY give? Freely means no restrictions. If I 'give' I do not take back. This was a deep awakening in my spiritual walk. I had not given freely, and how many times did I give only to take back. Make a long journey of this a bit shorter, Praying to be in HIS WILL not ours, lots of times we try to make our will his or find a way of going around his will to make ourselves believe our will is his. Can be confusing, but it is true human nature.
The outcome, I have come to place that I have surrendered all, freely given all to him. When I said my life is very different, it is. My days are not as on the farm. I have no cows, I do not milk. I have two bantie hens that give me about 2 eggs a day, two geese, one duck and one rabbit. On the farm we raised lots of chicken for meat and eggs, geese for pleasure, ducks for eggs and rabbits for meat. These mention before are the survivors that we brought with us, and they give me much joy. Gardening, is in the future. Right now we have plenty in our root cellar.
However, God has supplied a market in a town about 30 miles away, they raise pasture fed cows, have raw milk, organic pork, beef and chicken and eggs. I am thankful for this. I go about once a month and buy what I need. I make butter and cheese, Charles is making jerky, I make bone broth as they sell bones too. At first finding out about this market, I was still in my 'self' mode, although I was glad to find it out, it just wasn't the same as when we did it ourselves. Not thankful at all, as if telling God his provision is just not quite good enough. For my shame. In repentance, I can now, with a true heart say I am very thankful.
I see so very clearly now, that Charles and I could not have continued our farm life, even in the downscale, with no help as what we had in TN, it was impossible, but I was trying to make it work. It is a shame we humans, try as we do, will not accept God's way, his will for our lives when big changes come, never the less with small ones. He only, eve, r has our GOOD for our GOOD in his thought of his will for our lives. Many times it is not our way, perhaps not to our liking of what we are use too. But, I believe more now than before He does only for my good. And I do not need to have full understanding or question him or try to work around what he is working, I must freely give in total surrender my all.
My desire, of what is was, is not gratified here in our new place, but my desire has changed and continues to as I desire to have God's will in my life as to how we are to live in our new home, what he has for us. I am able to do some of the 'farm' ways by other means of acquiring, which gives me, aside from our daily care of our special needs children, time for projects outside and inside, such as crafting, flower/herb beds, or just walking around the land seeing what new plant I may discover from what the previous owner planted many years ago, and there are lots of wonderful plants, flowers and shrubs.
This move was not about me anyway, in many aspects it was for dear husband. His love of a nearby lake calls him often for a day of fishing, which while in TN he was unable to find any place to go and get to know it for fishing. This lake here, he has known for 6o yrs. So, we eat fish quite often ").
I have more to share, but this is long enough already.
I hope to get back to sharing more often.
IN JOY
